


Borne in Red

by kloppinthekop



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF, The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Handmaid's Tale Fusion, Angst, Crossover, Dubious Consent, Handmaid's Tale AU, Liverpool, Liverpool F.C., M/M, Multi, POV First Person, animal imagery abounds, for I am but borrowing from your novelistic universe, hendollana, inspired by the book not the show, mentions of suicide (not of major characters), please Atwood do not unleash your beautiful wrath upon me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-19 17:24:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15514812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kloppinthekop/pseuds/kloppinthekop
Summary: In a world where men have been discovered to be infertile, the few men who are not sterile are forced into service of Captains and their Wives.Adam Lallana is one of these "studs," also known as Reds. He is also, dangerously, in love with men. Over a course of Ceremonies, he discovers that his Captain has a secret, and that his proclivities may be indeed similar to Adam's own desires...AHendollana AUbased on Margaret Atwood's novel,The Handmaid's Tale.Please read Author's Notes for details on the Rape/Non-Con archive warning.Now complete!And now with epilogue!(I swear I'm done now. I swear.)





	1. Waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunasenzanotte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/gifts).



> Written for this footballkinkmeme request: "[Any/Any - The Handmaid's Tale-ish AU](https://footballkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/887.html?thread=11895#cmt11895): …reverse scenario of Gilead? Like... women aren't blamed for not being fertile, it's the damn men who can't get them pregnant, and so the fertile ones are forced to get the high-class women pregnant. Being gay is obviously a problem in this world, for obvious reasons. Add conspiracies, rebels, whatever you can think of, but mainly a lot of angst."
> 
>  **Warnings:** Some misogynistic and homophobic language, due to the nature of this fictional universe. I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum. Also, due to the nature of Atwood’s novel, **there is some non-consensual/dub-con sexual activity** involved. This occurs when Adam is talking about the Ceremony, and lasts for three short sections, the last three sections of this chapter. In case you want to skip these sections but read the rest of the fic, I’ve marked the section breaks before those parts with triple asterisks (instead of just the one). I will do the same in the next chapter (which is in progress), if necessary.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I do not lay claim to either Margaret Atwood's original work, from which this AU fic derived, nor the real people/footballers on which my fictional characters are based.

A chair, a table, a lamp. Above and around, all white: white ceiling, four white walls, white floor. A football in the corner, but no net, lest we use it as a strangulation device, an attempt to escape this fate, a life of service. 

The lamp is indestructible plastic. There is an old, brown-ish stain under the spot where it sits now; at some point, they must have given us glass lamps, and the previous tenant of my room must have used it to some success, if the size of the bloodstain is any measure. The whitewasher must have missed the spot. It’s a sizeable spot to have missed.

The window, also impenetrable. Through it, I can see the football pitch, where regulations “allow” us to train thrice a day. Training keeps our muscles strong, our bodies healthy, and our blood pumped full of testosterone. 

Training also gives them an opportunity to observe; to examine us like the studs we are. “Stud” is no compliment, just a designation of our utilitarian roles. We breed. We are breeders. Like animals, our only goal in life is to breed new life. 

If we do not succeed, we die. 

This is no life, anyway.

*

Some of the younger lads do not see the life for what it is. Young, virile studs, they bluster about, posturing with their chests and dick-baring stances. We wear protective cups, lest the goods be damaged, but you can tell when a young stud has a large penis. There’s a certain energy to them, at least for the first few years. With some of them, the energy never wears off, and they become brutal, mean and cutthroat. 

I try to keep my distance from those Reds.

We are called Reds from the garments we wear: red, the color of blood, the color of aggression, the color of a crying baby’s face just after it has been cleaned of birthing fluids. 

Red, the color that used to bring me such joy: in a past life, a life that does not seem like it was ever my own, not anymore. The color that I used to wear proudly, now turned into a weapon against me.

Red, so easy to spot in the crowd, on the streets, even in the forbidden woods. In red, there is no escape.

Still, some men try. Particularly men like me.

It rarely ends well.

Ends in, well, more red. 

*

I do not have a name, only a number. 20. They brand us with these numbers, which other than the red garments become our only designations. 

I barely remember what I was called before, only remember that it used to roll off the tongue of my lover like a river burbling over smooth rocks, cool and refreshing, bestowing a sense of calm.

It’s a rare day that I remember him now, so good the government has been at alleviating us from our past stories, our past lives. But I do remember him every now and then, starting as a pain in my chest region, a pain that spreads across my entire body and soul. It is not a pain that can be registered by any of the government’s tests, and though the strict regimens go some way to working us so hard that we have little room left in our bodyminds for reflection or memories, still the faintest thought of him lingers.

On a good day, I can remember his name, though I cannot remember my own. Danny; Danny Ings. My Danny boy.

Danny was taken away for being sterile, many moons ago, but his strength and barrenness made for the perfect qualities of a guard-dog. 

My mind believes it has caught a glimpse of him once, at assembly, but the crowd swallowed the vision of him up in its greedy maw. I have never seen him, or this spectre of him, again. 

I don’t even know if he really saw him in the first place: if it was a mirage, the mind playing tricks on me. Seclusion wreaks havoc on the mind. 

So does desperation, and self-hatred.

*

Love between two men is forbidden, you see. This society relies on the breeding imperative, the struggle for reproduction. The only correct pairing is a man and a woman, or that having failed, a man and a woman, and their stud. 

We may belong to the man, our captains, but we are in service of the woman. 

The derogatory term for wives and mistresses among Reds are “WAGs,” but we must be careful to never utter this word in public, or even in private. Whispering “WAG,” an ironically wagging tongue, means immediate execution. 

Disrespect to our mistresses is never allowed. Unthinkable, by stricture of law.

My captain’s wife is not the worst. She’s even nice, often with an apologetic look on her face, before the Ceremony. 

During the Ceremony, however, her face is shuttered. No emotion exists there, and it’s hard to believe that she feels anything at all. Not even pride.

By any standard, she and my captain are a success story. Married before the cull, before the low-level radiation blast, before the reports started ringing out about barrenness, before the scientists were murdered for their insights… before those insights turned out to be true. 

They had one child from before the blast, one child from after. 

We are strictly forbidden to think of them as our children, but, the second child has my blood.

Her name was so close to the name we, my lover and I, had been considering for our second child, when he was still in his surrogate mother’s womb. We were so close to having that child, before everything was taken away from us. 

Before everything was taken away from me, including our first child.

I have wiped his name from my memory, in attempt to spare myself the pain, but the ache is reticent to subside. Although every day his face fades a little more from my consciousness, the hole of where he used to be grows deeper every waking day.

My little boy.

Of course now, even though they are not “our” children, we help the wives with the childrearing, when we are suited. The Reds who are overly aggressive, with their toxic energies, are kept away; but many Reds like me have had children before. Know how to care for our own, for the bairns.

It’s the one piece of our past that we are encouraged to keep alive. 

Love, but only the right kind.

*

Ironic, then, that the love for my former son carries with it my love for my former partner. It’s a slippery slope, this. 

A surprising percentage of the Reds, of fertile studs, were gay in their past lives. Gay, or bisexual- the bulk of them likely bisexual, though there are no official statistics to back up this hearsay. Of course, the official story is that any same-sex love has always been heresy, and will continue to be heresy into perpetuity. 

But the unofficial accounts tell more interesting lies.

As they always do.

*

My master is a captain, a real one. Former naval captain, from the rumors I hear. 

It is difficult to be sure though; all past lives have been wiped, not just for the Reds, but for all men. All books have been burned, it is said, but history books and genealogy tracts were destroyed with the most zealousness. Anything that could set apart a man as an individual, as having a personal history: a life of his own.

There is no life like that anymore. Not for anyone.

So some masters, “captains,” get away with calling themselves that despite having never set foot on foreign soil, having never served in any capacity. 

Will never be forced to serve in any capacity, not in their positions of power, despite their sterility.

It is unclear how these men came to secure their positions, how despite their barrenness they have cultivated riches and status. When we, the studs, should biologically be superior in this strange hierarchy our government has forged.

The lines are clearly delineated, however, and these men are superpowers of heterosexuality, of masculine presence. 

Whether that power is deserved or not, is a question we must never ask.

*

I am, by now, considered old guard. Old stock, but still productive. 

Reproductive.

I train hard, and for this I am rewarded. I am allowed some small amount of power on the field, allowed to pick my training partner, and sometimes allowed to pick my team in training matches. 

Usually, our captains choose for us, or the all-seeing eye of the government hands down line-ups an hour in advance, lists memorized by guard-dogs and passed over to officiating government referees. (After all, nothing is written down or read anymore. Everything is word-of-mouth, both through official and unofficial lines.)

Some sick part of me still enjoys this: the meager amount of power I am allowed, yes, but mostly the small freedom of playing football, of training hard, of earning my own sweat and aching of muscles. 

There is little that we can say is our own these days. My sweat, the flush of my blood pumping strongly under my pale skin after a strenuous workout, the temporary exuberance of a win… these are precious commodities, small concessions for our obedience. 

I cannot even say that I own my own body anymore, not really, but no one lays claim to my sweat—they don’t think to, to moderate these excesses of the body—and so I will say that these excretions are mine.

*

Of course, other bodily excretions are namely not our own. 

We are taken in a van for blood and semen testing twice every moon cycle. The clinic is set up in what used to be a gymnasium. The nurses are emotionless as they draw our blood, their low status in society affording them little happiness. Though they have skills, and are highly-trained, they rank lower than even Marthas, though they sit a rung above Econowives. 

And of course, Unwomen, who are unspoken about.

Drug testing is not necessary, any substance that could affect the blood or our testosterone levels being strictly forbidden and having been destroyed at the inception of the government’s reign.

After our blood has been drawn, the nurses supervise our ejaculations. We are forced to masturbate in a small tented area, closed off from other Reds and men, but accompanied by a nurse. The nurses that serve in this capacity are usually the older women, but some of the aggressive Reds still try to rile them up, make them an object of their sexual pleasure. 

The nurses remain emotionless, duty-bound and goal-oriented. These young studs’ advances are rebuffed with little difficulty, and studs eventually learn to treat the whole experience as a job. A thankless job, an empirical examination. 

Our samples are taken aside to be evaluated by doctors, still mostly men, who are kept away from nurses and studs for the most part, unless medical issue should arise, or a stud’s sperm count should be particularly low. 

There are whispers that doctors sometimes offer their own…services…and require servicing behind closed curtains. Doctors are, of course, sterile, and forbidden contact with women other than Econowives, and most choose not to sully themselves with these low-ranking “sluts.” 

Some of the studs enjoy getting off, no matter what the circumstance: during Ceremony, with a doctor, or if rumors are to be believed, even with some guard-dogs who secretly offer up their beds to lucky Reds late at night.

Other than the Ceremony, which is of course mandatory, I want none of this. 

I want nothing if it’s not love.

And love, of course, is hard to come by these days, especially for a man like me.

***

I have to admit though, that there is something on the horizon. Something dangerous, to be sure, but… 

Over the past three Ceremonies, I have become aware of a strange occurrence. We have gone through the motions all the same, all according to regulation, but still, there is something different. Something different about the Captain. 

My captain.

We had been briefed on proper Ceremony rites in our training, of course, mandatory meetings making even the eldest of us feel like schoolchildren again. Ran through the proper procedure until we had not merely memorized the steps but ingrained them fully into our bodyminds. 

First, we would all gather in the Ceremony room, usually decorated by the Wives (or really, the Marthas as overseen by the Wives) in jewel-tones befitting the latest fashions, dimly-lit. The Captain would recite scripture, and then present himself in front of the wife on the lavish bed. We, the Reds, would stand to the left of our captain, standing at the ready, in more ways than one. A chosen Bessie would kneel to our right then, next to us and seated below the Captain, facing up at him. The Bessie would then offer her services, using one hand for the Captain’s pleasure, the other to prepare the Red. Once both were fully erect, the Bessie would be dismissed by the Captain, leaving the room.

The Captain would then step back and direct the Red to slot himself in, in front of the Captain, facing the Wife lain across the bed. He would then place his arms around the Red to grasp his Wife’s hips, and direct the movement of the Red into his Wife. It would then be the stud to penetrate the Wife, but there was to be no doubt that it was really the Captain in charge, controlling all movements, until the Red’s release. 

They would all wait a perfunctory span of time to ensure that the seed had entered the Wife, before moving away. The Red would then be seen out of the room, ushered out by a Martha and trusted guard-dog waiting outside with a damp towel with which to clean himself, and be steered back to his room to wait.

Waiting, always waiting.

***

But as I said, something different had begun to happen, in my captain’s household. 

It had come to my attention that, during the period of time when the Bessie was doing her duty knelt beneath us, the Captain was not looking at his wife.

Was, instead, looking at me. 

His wife, who was mostly stoic but perhaps a touch ashamed of the whole process, always had her eyes closed. Usually kept them closed through the entire Ceremony, only looking at me with strangely wet, dead eyes at the very end, when all was done and all we could do was wait. Even with my dick softening inside her, soaking her with my ejaculate, she would peer up at me with a look that almost spoke of pity. Like she wanted to help me, to reach out and touch some chord of truth inside me, to unlock my happiness and set it free.

If this was the case, she would never be able to succeed.

But the Captain… he had begun to look at me throughout the process, not just at the beginning and end of procedure. I could see him cataloguing parts of me, but not like the trainers did on the field with purely clinical gazes. 

I could see something different, something darker, in his gaze.

Something that looked a lot like lust.

***

During the most recent ceremony, I began to catalogue his glances too. Noticed how his eyes sought out mine, now that I too was looking at him. Noticed how his gaze drifted lower, first to rest at my chest, and then lower still, where the Bessie’s hand wrapped around rapidly-hardening flesh. Noticed how, when my cock quivered, so too did his left hand, the one closest to my body. An index finger separating slightly from the other fingers, as if it wanted to liberate itself from his body to touch mine. 

What would that touch be like, with a single finger? Would it be gentle, a caressing touch? Or would it be insistent, demanding? And where would that touch land?

All these thoughts were ones forbidden to me, but still I wondered, in that moment, captivated by the knowledge that the Captain was held enthralled by my presence: _my_ presence.

And despite the Bessie’s hands on both him and me, and his Wife stretched out below us, it was like we were suddenly alone in the room. 

Until, of course, duty called, and the Bessie slipped out to signal the beginning of copulation. Breeding. But still, I noticed, and watched, and _felt_.

Felt when the Captain’s arms reached around me to grasp his Wife the firmness of his inner arms, wrapping around my own hips as he grabbed onto Hers. The scratch of the coarse hair there, rubbing against my own smooth skin. Felt the weight of his cock against my back, my ass, so hard and insistent. Felt liquid gather at its tip, as it pressed up against me, as _he_ pressed up against me, holding me in place. He was so close to me that I could feel every twitch of his thighs, could feel his hot breath turning to condensation on my neck as he began the process, as he pushed me—us—into his wife’s waiting warmth. 

And this time, perhaps because I was cataloguing every second of what was happening, I could feel a brush of lips at the nape of my neck, a nose pressing up higher into the space where hair began, could feel that mouth slightly agape, a moistness growing at that spot where his tongue met my neck with almost every thrust forward. A moistness that mirrored the one lower on my body, which had slipped lower, pressing into the crease where ass met lower back, dipping into the curve there as if it fit there, belonged there. As if he belonged there. 

As if I were his.

And of course later, when the heat of the moment worn off, I knew that it was because I _was_ his. His property, his stud, his faithful and unquestioning Red. He could do whatever he liked with me, even breed me: it wasn’t unheard of, that a captain would take pleasure in his studs, since it was uncouth for them to enter their wife after a Ceremony, lest the Red’s seed seep out in the ensuing action. Some men were horny enough to take their stud in substitution; or even some, as rumors told, preferred their studs to the soft flesh of their wives.

But I had never heard such gossip of my captain, never heard him called "fag" or other such slurs from the aggressive, posturing Reds whom I tried so hard to avoid. My captain was the Captain par excellence, a shining example of strength and power, who maintained his status not through brute force or empty publicity stunts but instead through his calculated, intelligent interactions with other members of society. A true Captain was he, it was said.

And still.

Still I felt, felt _him_. 

And it was evident that he felt me too, because the past two times, he had always come at the exact same moment as I. This was never to be spoken about, but, I felt it, and this time, I felt his hand too: a palm caressing my flank, which could be seen by outside eyes as wiping away evidence of his own effluence, but which I felt to be more than that. It was a possessive touch, yes, but also oddly a touch reassuring, as if to acknowledge that I was there: _I_. 

As if his touch carried me out of object status and into something lurking just beneath personhood. Something worth, if not worthy of, his attention, the heavy-lidded gaze of his that seeped like molten lava into my core.

It was a gaze that made the perfunctory period, the waiting time, seem less perfunctory; it was instead punctuated by a heaviness in the atmosphere, like lightning sizzling on the periphery, not yet ready to strike, but there on the edges of vision. Waiting. 

When I separated at last from his wife, I could hear him listening, waiting for the moment of slickness as flesh left flesh. Could feel his body tense when the sound occurred, the twitch of two fingers now, as his hands glanced past my hips in retreat from his wife’s body, past my own, back into his own space.

Hand, I should say, as some moment when my attention had lapsed, one hand had left his wife’s and landed on my body. Had wiped away his cum, had rested on me for nearly a minute. Somehow I had felt this with my body but not my mind, which was only later catching up.

Had the touch started before I had reached my release? Had he been holding me, while we were fucking ourselves into his wife? 

These too were forbidden questions, but they lingered for days, as I sat in my room.

Waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, constructive critique/suggestions, and kudos are most welcome. 
> 
> The fic is darker/more angst-ridden than what I have written before, so I most admit I'm a little anxious about its reception. Comments from y'all would be amazing (seriously, the comments I've received so far on previous fics have made me smile like a fool in public)!
> 
> You can find my tumblr here: <http://dr-azumi-fujita.tumblr.com> (formerly adleriarty)


	2. Discovering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and comments so far! (P.S. I’m teaching a course next year in which a bulk of our time will be spent reading Margaret Atwood so… maybe I can kind of count this as pedagogical research? Even though I only reread like two pages of the novel in preparation for fic-writing? Lol.) 
> 
> The names are a little less ambiguous here than in the first chapter, as I begin to flesh their characters out. My Milner here is somewhat influenced by @lesbleusthroughandthrough’s Milly in the wonderful Hendollana fic, “[Let me spin and excite you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15092492)” (albeit in a very different context). Thanks for the inspiration!

The next Ceremony came, and was much the same: this new undercurrent of _something dangerous and alluring_ pulsing below the surface of everything we did. I wondered if the Bessie noticed, if she had become as curious as I in these past moon cycles. Wondered if the Captain noticed me, noticing him.

He must have. I was too obvious.

Our gazes had met once again, this time, and I had even caught a brief flash of a grin, shark-like and intense, but not aggressive.

He was hard to read, and I was out of practice, but I wanted. Wanted to know his thoughts, his desires. Wanted so badly, it almost hurt; like a new pain, but one not entirely unwelcome. Wanted him.

So, understandably, I was frightened when I received summons two days later to meet the Captain in his office. The Captain’s most trusted guard-dog, Milner (designated “7,” but who had been with the Captain for so long that he was still often beckoned and referred to by name as they did in the old days), came by my room at night when the rest of the house had to have been asleep. Told me in a gruff voice, monotone, that I was to be escorted to the Captain’s office at 21 o’clock sharp, tomorrow evening, although the numbers made little sense to me, time having slipped from regimented hours and minutes into free-floating nothingness: my life an endless waiting period punctuated only by Ceremonies, assemblies, and training.

“He wants to see you. In his office.”

I ask for an explanation, half in shock. “Why?” Why me?

No one was allowed in the Captain’s office but the Captain and the guard-dog who stood watch outside while he was inside sorting out whatever affairs befit a captain. While Wives ruled the house, and nominally ruled in society, the offices of each captain were sacred spaces: a man’s true dominion.

There were few such spaces left to man.

The guard-dog only repeats, Tomorrow: 21 o’clock sharp, in response.

Hence, what were left of my nails were quickly bitten to a quick, waiting for the guard-dog to chaperone me from my waiting room to the Captain’s the following evening. I waited throughout the night, unable to sleep. Waited throughout the day, through that day’s light training—training was always less strenuous the days following Ceremony—waited through meals that I was forced to eat, tasting nothing.

Waited, waited, waiting.

It’s all I could do.

*

“I want you to kiss me,” the Captain says. My captain.

But, of course, something came before that; such requests require context. But this is the line that I remember most now, in the aftermath.

I want you.

Kiss me.

*

I.

You.

*

When the guard-dog finally arrived, and I could tell he was on-time even though I could no longer tell time, I followed him silently; closed the door behind me with utmost care as to make no sound, so that no one would think to consider my absence. We padded quietly through the halls, until we arrived at a large mahogany door. The guard-dog rapped on the door thrice, two fast _thunks_ of the knuckles followed by a pause, and a third.

The door opened, and the Captain’s voice came out from behind it. “Thank you, Milly.”

His man nodded at me in the direction of the door now-ajar, motioning for me to enter. I did, after a brief hesitation which seemed to irk the guard-dog, who settled into position outside the office, staring stonily ahead.

“Come in,” I was told as I stepped haltingly across the eaves. The room was lush, but not in a cold fashion; red curtains draped over the large glass windows, and memorabilia lined the wooden walls, also stained mahogany. These items seemed to hold personal meaning for the inhabitant; a couple well-worn jerseys, a few not so worn but adorned with signatures. The Captain must have been a sports-man in addition to naval officer, if the rumors were to be believed. Perhaps he had been a captain in more than one context. If the golden trophies that lined the large cabinets were any indication, he had been well-respected, no matter what it was that he had done in those days.

The Captain seemed content to let me look around, his gaze not as heavy on me as it had been during the Ceremony, but just as intent. As my focus shifted from the surroundings to him, his posture straightened.

“I haven’ asked you here because you’ve done anything wrong,” he started off. I was mildly reassured, but still on edge. I was now, in this moment, doing something wrong. My presence here, in his office—his sacred space—was illegal. To be alone with the Captain was to be in forbidden territory, and I had literally stepped foot into that prohibited terrain.

That’s all we were; vessels of sperm, with legs. To be emptied into a Captain’s wife, to have no existence but in service.

And yet.

“I admit that I would like to… get to know you better,” he continued. “You can sit down, if you would like. If it would put you at ease.”

He motions toward a chair, which does look plush with ruby red cushions, but I doubt anything would comfort me in this moment. Not even a reassuring hand running down my flank. Not even his gaze.

But he has gestured for me to take a seat, as he does, so I do. I sit in the chair with a stiff back, ramrod straight, as if I am to be rebuked for any less.

“You must have questions,” he says, facing me from his own chair, which makes him look like a king ensconced in his throne. I am a mere serf in his kingdom, a lowly worker ant. A stud.

“I…” and am immediately forced to clear my throat. It seems forever since I have spoken. Has been forever—never—since I have spoken to the Captain. (Never is a forever.) “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I admit.

“I want…” He shifts in his throne. What? I think. What could you want?

Me?

“I want…” he repeats, trailing off, before completing the thought: “I want you to feel at home here.”

Impossible, I think.

A look must pass across my face which speaks to his thought, because he adds, “We will have to work at it, to make you feel properly at ease. But I want to know you. And I want you to know me too.”

My thoughts are racing. I had a sense that he wanted, wanted me, but this is… this is almost innocent.

Without malice. He wants to know me.

How strange.

*

The next day, I meet my training partner on the pitch. “With hope in your heart,” I say to him, the accepted greeting amongst Reds. “You’ll never walk alone,” he replies, the accepted response.

“Allez,” I add, motioning that we step onto the grass—fake turf, to save on water, which has become an increasingly scarce though not-yet-endangered resource. Not yet.

My training partner is young, almost unbelievably young. But studs are precious property, so age seems no concern these days. Perhaps in this regard I have held on to old-fashioned ways.

He is of age though, even according to past standards. Nineteen. So young still, though, and I almost feel protective of him. I am grateful for him that he has been placed with one of the nicer Captains, Sturridge.

Studge, as I have heard my captain affectionately refer to him as, is a close comrade of Henderson’s (my captain, and it’s quite new to think of him by his name, which he had urged to call him by—or Hendo, gods above—at the end of our first meeting in his office). And at least with his Captain, he will not be judged by the color of his skin; among other nastiness, the aggressive studs tend to be virulently racist, and I’m glad for only this reason that my training partner has been placed within a Captain’s household already, away from such rough crowd. And indeed, it is a good placement, because although his is a fit Captain and stories circulate of his past heroic exploits, he is often absent from assemblies and crowds, due to lingering injuries. No doubt from having proved himself in the field.

Sturridge is not yet married, a rare occurrence for a Captain who has made a name for himself. There are talks that he is soon to be married; and after all, the women have some freedom in this society, if only out of respect for their reproductive capabilities, their superiority in life-giving capacities. If a Wife-to-Be is not yet ready for marriage, she can prolong an engagement, and a Captain can procure a Red with eventuality in mind. Can groom his stud to be a proper servant of the household, to meet the needs of he and his future Wife.

My training partner is one of these cases, and is already branded with the number 66. He’s just a young pup.

He is so young that he is that far into the double digits; almost unbelievable. But despite his youth, he is trustworthy, and he trains hard. He is a perfect training partner; knows when to speak, to alleviate the tension that sometimes mounts from being around so much testosterone daily on and off the pitch. Also knows when not to speak, to let the silence blanket us, buffet us from outside concerns. To allow us time to think, outside of our oppressively white rooms, out in the sun and fresh air.

He is also impressively fit, and talented on the ball.

I always miss my training partners when they go; we hear of transfers, and transfers do happen with neighboring counties, but rumors tell that some of these transfers are really to the Colonies. Reds who are sent to the Colonies are never heard from again.

I hope with all my being that none of my training partners have met this fate.

But for now, I can be a good mentor to my current partner, and I put all of my newly-heightened restless energy into this task.

All to put thoughts of yesterday out of my mind. Last night, in the Captain’s office.

The Captain, kissing me.

My captain.

*

In an attempt to make me feel more at ease, the Captain had suggested that we exchange jokes. I remember being fond of jokes in days past, but I could hardly remember a punchline now. The Captain seemed prepared for this eventuality, handing me a book whose cover declared it to be a collection of “Dad jokes.”

“Can you read?” he asks, not unkindly. I hesitate once more, unsure whether to reveal my secret or not. Being literate could get me into trouble. “I won’t tell,” he assures me, and I believe him; for some unfathomable reason, I really do believe him. I nod in assent, and gingerly take the book—a pamphlet would perhaps be more accurate—from his outstretched hand.

Most of the jokes are in fact too raucous and silly to recite out loud, at this late hour, and it’s clear that the Captain has not thought of this. What a luxury, to not worry about every word, every sound that comes out of you, I think. He looks suitably sheepish though, and instead offers a picture album to replace the jokes book, which he takes from my hands. He looks at me as he does this, first at my hands, and then at my face, as if peering into my soul.

It is almost too much to bear, and I look down at the photo album to spare myself from blushing under his gaze. I can tell that I don’t quite succeed, from the way that his eyes fixate on my cheeks.

I open the album, and as it reveals its contents, I touch a page reverently. “These are…”

“Photos of me, yes. As a wee bairn, there,” he says. I can’t tell if he slips into an accent accidentally or if it’s part of this strange show he is putting on for me. Perhaps both at once; it’s clear that this accent comes, along with these photographs, from his past life; one that he has, almost impossibly, catalogued and kept with him, despite the scrutiny that has been no less severe on men of power like him than it has been on studs like me.

Perhaps the government’s gaze on men like him, however, isn’t so constant, if he’s managed to keep this, this precious reminder of who he is. Was.

I listen intently as the Captain narrates each image, allowing me to flip the pages at my leisure. Allows me this small gift of control, and it’s so rare, that I can’t help but fall a little in love with him at each page-turn.

It’s pathetic, I will think later, that such a small thing could give myself over so fully to him. And I was, by all intents and purposes, supposed to be all his already, but in the course of one evening, he had, haltingly, won me over.

I was still determined to be cautious, but love can quickly erode one’s instincts.

I could feel myself falling in love, only solidified by the end of our first evening together, in his office.

With his eyes on mine, he offers me a gift I’ve never known I wanted, a gift that I never thought to seek out.  
  
He gifts me his name.

And then he asks if he can kiss me, and I only think for a second before leaning over, placing my hand in his lap—such broad thighs, I think for another split second—and kissing him.

Chaste, like we’ve just met.

When I pull away, eyes having closed of their own accord, he reaches out for my jaw, where stubble has grown in. Looks almost sad, sheepish. “Not like that, next time.”

Next time?, I think to myself.

“Next time,” he continues, “like you mean it.”

Henderson, I think. Jordan Henderson.

My captain.

His name reverberates through me like it has replaced my heartbeat, like his kiss has transfused himself—him, my captain—into my bloodstream.

Hendo.

The name is forbidden on the tip of my tongue, resting in the back of my throat where swallowed words reside. It makes me crave it imperceptively more.

I have tasted something that I cannot give back.

Hendo.

*

His name flows through me until it starts to become second nature, like a synapse firing or a heaved breath. But I am still the same me, the same non-me. Must be, under the eyes of other men, and other studs.

And so, the next day, I return to training. Go through the motions, perform everything that is expected of me. To the untrained eye—and for all their so-called knowledge about training, the government officials are unskilled in the arts of love—I look normal, the very picture of a perfectly obedient Red.

But inside, a new life has begun to bloom, threatening to burst through every pore, and my training partner notices.

He is young, but somehow wise in the skills of observation. And, I suppose, we have built a partnership that extends beyond the veneer of “training partnership,” verging on friendship, perhaps even brotherhood. So I should not be surprised that he picks up on something that lies under the surface, but nevertheless I am scared.

Scared for both he and I. And Hendo.

My partner is careful, however. Doesn’t venture to speak until we are just out of eyesight of the trainers. He uses a water bottle to shield his lips, a feint that hides the words he offers next: “Have you and your captain…” He pauses to take a gulp of water, to add belief to the conceit. “Are you and he…?”

The question lingers in the air, unfinished. He doesn’t need to complete the thought. I give myself over to him in trust, responding with a small, sharp nod. I expect him to understand this gesture for the answer that it is, and he does.

Smart lad. I can only hope that he is as careful with secrets as he is good at observing others. At observing me.

Under his eyes, I could be undone. Instead, glancing quickly at the trainers who are still preoccupied with a different training group, he returns my nod with one of his own.

This secret stays between us.

Yet another danger, another potential chasm to fall into. A treacherous void, with gleaming teeth like knives.

We must be vigilant, for one another.

And for him.

“Hendo,” my body breathes his name as I cannot with my mouth.

Hendo.

*

The next time we meet, Hendo slowly becomes Jordan in my head. It’s an incremental change, one I almost forget to catalogue, but something impels me to pay attention. It’s like the sky shifting from one color to another, a deeper shade of brilliance, at sunset.

Evening swiftly becomes my most cherished time of day.

I begin to have a sense of Time.

Our second clandestine meeting comes less than a week after the first. The guard-dog—Milly, I must remember to overlay in my mind—guides us to my captain’s office without expression. My captain— _Jordan_ —beckons me to enter, closing the heavy wooden door behind my body.

We begin this time with the album. I notice, this time, that many of the photographs’ edges are well-worn, yellowing in places where long fingers must have gripped, and I wonder what it must be like to be held so, to be held in deft hands and enraptured gaze.

I have some inkling of what that must feel like, under the eyes of my captain, under the memory of his fingers on my skin during Ceremony, blistered onto my consciousness.

And now, here in his office, making new memories.

*

There is a steely determination in his eyes as he leans forward this time, telling me to kiss him.

It is like the last time, but also not. The same request, with different results, the consequence of the person I am becoming under his attention. I feel myself starting to grow beyond the fences society has placed around me, luxuriating in the warmth of Jordan’s sunlight.

(And of course, this is all a reconstruction. It is night, and the room is cold, and I am still not a person, not in this world. It is a story, a story I am telling myself.

But it is a story I begin to believe, and a story believed so fervently can hold more power than reality.)

I become a person, under the press of his mouth. Under his tongue, which splits the seam between my lips, opens me up like a gift.

Like a spoiled child, he opens me up all for himself, eagerly with rough, profane fingers. I register the heat pooling in my gut, spreading down further still, all the blood in my body rushing south.

It is not easy to hide from a man like my captain, and I cannot hide anything now. He must see, must feel, me growing against him, and he sidles up to my body like a cat, a majestic creature.

His kiss is bruising, and I welcome the pain. My lips, chapped from the wind lashing at my face during training, begin to crack, and I can taste a hint of blood. He must taste this too, and in sharing this, our boundaries blur: he has tasted inside of me, plundered my depths, lapped at the fiber of my being.

And now it is I who wants. I, who reaches out with hands that seem almost not my own (and they aren’t, truly) for his waist. He lets me touch him.

He lets me touch him, but when my hands reach lower, stray past the edge of his belt, he stops me.

“Not here,” he whispers hotly into my ear, before kissing even more hotly into the space between neck and jaw.

I whimper, involuntarily.

“Not here,” he repeats, and adds. “When we achieve togetherness, I want all of you. I want to hear your screams, your gasps, your filthily handsome mouth speaking my name. I want your reverence, not your obeisance.”

A shudder thunders through my body, and I have to bury my face in his strong chest to hide my frustration.

His touch grows more gentle, stroking along my spine. “I want you,” he tells the air behind my head.

I want you, he tells me.

My body leaves his office unfulfilled that night, but I gain something else. Hunger. Lust.

Want.

*

The air is heavy the following morning, pregnant with something sinister. A storm, perhaps. The sky practically sizzles, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

We play on in the rain. Today is a match day, and I register the whoops of Reds on the sidelines, waiting their turn to substitute the ten on the field. We play five-a-side, and I feel my training partner’s presence behind me at all times.

The afternoon sky is dark, but the air still warm. A contradiction, perhaps.

The game is a blur, over almost too soon. I don’t know if we have even won, but I suppose it does not matter.

This is all a conceit, a way to keep us under their thumb, to observe us and mold our bodies into more willing servants.

And yet, there is a certain freedom afforded by the game, something that no one who does not love this sport cannot fully grasp.

Passion always carries with it both freedom and unfreedom.

Man is slave to his passions, but passion rules with a mercurial fist.

Trudging along to the sidelines, I push rain-slicked hair up from my forehead, spying my training partner. I catch his glance, rising, and I follow it upwards.

From a nearby edifice, I see two figures in a window, looking down on us. Watching us.

The rain seeps into my eyes as I look heavenward, and I have to wipe the water away, spitting onto the turf.

When I look back, the figures have already retreated.

*

We do not meet again during this moon cycle.

I do not receive any summons.

My body is alight with energy, yet dampened by frustration. A contradiction. I do not know what is happening, what is happening to me.

This waiting, every day after.

Where is he?

What am I to him? What was all this, what did he intend by leaving me alone in the dark?

A chair, a table, a lamp. Above and all around, all darkness.

What am I?

*

Waiting, again. Waiting.

There is to be an assembly tomorrow, but also, more importantly... the next Ceremony.

I await his touch.

A kiss, I cannot expect, but just a single touch. One touch from you, my captain, will set my body aflame. Something to light my way out of this darkness.

Someone.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry, I truly laughed when I turned “You’ll never walk alone” into the “Blessed be the fruit” greeting. I am an awful human being. This fic is not meant for laughing, and yet… yeah. I’m awful. 
> 
> If you’re not an awful person like me though (and even if you are), I would appreciate comments, suggestions, and kudos from y’all! They give me life, seriously: I “live for the applause” (sorry, Gaga just popped into my head, and Lady Gaga is apparently not to be denied). Love to all who have read/commented/kudos’d thus far! I think there’s only one more chapter to go. (Maybe two more at the very most, but I'm hoping one is enough.) Let me know what you think! <3 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr here: <http://dr-azumi-fujita.tumblr.com> (formerly adleriarty)


	3. Being

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, it gets quite explicit at the end of this chapter. I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. (As I noted in [_Soft Lad_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15458046), I am an asexual writing smut, I literally don’t know what happened. Please forgive me.) Ahem. I mean I guess that's what fiction writing is all about? 
> 
> Carry on.

Assembly day arrives, and we are granted a shortened training session for the occasion. This is not unusual.

The studs are lined up two-by-two when we’ve finished changing out of our training gear and back into our red garments. As usual, I am matched up with my training partner, who brushes a hand across his natural curly hair.

It’s a nervous gesture, and I wonder why. Of course, I have my own set of nerves bundled up inside of me, but this day should be like any other Assembly day…

I look at him questioningly, and he simply shrugs. I feel that he is hiding something, but we are too close to others for me to call him out on it, to inquire further. If it has anything to do with Assembly, then I assume that I will find out for myself, soon enough.

Soon enough cannot come soon enough, however. There is no storm today, but still I feel something in the air. I am on high alert. Even my hair stands up straighter than usual, some leftover biological impulse from an earlier stage of evolution when everything was dangerous, and every surrounding creature could be a fatal predator.

In retrospect, not such a different time from now.

My training partner’s arm brushes up against mine, as if to reassure me. I pull away, chagrinned that he should know something that I don’t. His eyes turn down at the edges, and I immediately feel remorse for being so short with him. It isn’t his fault. No one’s fault that everything turned out this way.

No one to blame but the system.

I stare ahead, and we march on.

*

Assembly plods on as usual, until it doesn’t.

My head lifts in surprise when I see my captain take the stage. He is known for his speeches, in days past, but his reputation is such that he no longer has to make public appearances to maintain his position.

I am so startled that I almost miss the moment when my training partner’s captain, Sturridge, joins my captain at the podium. As they face the masses, sun casting shadows on their faces, I learn the reason for my captain’s—Jordan’s, I think longingly—absence in recent days, weeks.

The two captains have been working hard behind the scenes, and today is an unveiling of their work.

It is nothing less than a sea change. As they make their announcement, a murmur ripples throughout the crowd. My captain’s words reverberate through the stands like waves through once-still water.

Captains, according to official decree, are now allowed to train and compete alongside their studs (or future studs) at any time. Such participation is not mandatory, but captains can join in without warning, whenever they so please.

The rationale is simple: for too long, their studs have been under the eyes of others. If a captain wishes to delegate the task of controlling his Reds, he may do so, and the government officials who serve as training referees will remain fixtures on the pitch. However, if a captain wishes to take more direct supervision of his men—and after all, he owns them—they may now do so.

What better way to ensure the fitness and obedience of one’s Red? And what better way to observe him closely, to obstruct the avenues for treacherous gossip and conspiracy?

These are the official reasons, but I know my captain better now, I think. I know that on one level, this is a ploy to maintain and reinforce the power structure. But there are layers to this decision, levels of potentiality to unlock.

One of them, I can’t help but think, is the chance to spend more time with me.

But I am not so naïve and lovestruck to think that this is the only reason.

He has given me a glimpse of his past life, the man he used to be, and I cannot help but admire how deftly he has crafted this new decree to allow him access to these old passions. How he must have agonized, these long years, unable to do what he loved best, if those lovingly-creased photographs, hidden away in his office, told me anything about him and his desires. How awful it must have been to see us from far away, unable to himself play the game he loved. How he must have longed so badly for a ball between his feet, to wear a jersey, anything but the boring suits required of captains.

To play football again.

It’s a small wonder that he and Sturridge relayed the message with such calm, such practiced indifference. I think that Sturridge must have confided in his stud, my training partner, which explains his shifty glances earlier today. But my captain—he had told no one, had borne this secret alone.

Did he think that there was no one he could trust? Did he not trust me?

Or did he think that he was keeping me safe by keeping me out of the loop? Away from the prying eyes that might find my reaction less than surprised? If both my training partner and I had been acting strangely, surely someone must have noticed.

Perhaps my captain, Jordan, was simply keeping an eye out for me. Protecting me.

As I am pondering this, it takes me a moment to realize that the faces surrounding me are not all happy. Some look almost murderous. The aggressive studs, I think, are right to be angry, in their positions. The government officials have been in their pockets for a long time now, too scared to question or caution them. But now, things might change. A more controlled game could spell disaster for the small sliver of power they believe they’ve won themselves through brute force.

I wonder if my captain knows the danger brewing. If he’s calculated this, if he’s played out the possible consequences, and if so—if knowing all these perils—then why? Why would he risk his reputation? Why trouble the waters now? After all these years, when he and his comrades have been in powerful positions?

What could spur him to do something so rash, and, dare I think it… revolutionary?

*

Of course, other revolutionary forces have existed. Some have come and gone, flared up only to be quashed… Others have lasted longer, completely under the radar. Either way, it was impossible to think that, under such conditions, no one would take oppositional stance to the government, to the ways things have been.

The group I had heard rumors of, covert whispers that came from no one and no place but existed in the shadows still, was known as The Livers.

They were one of the groups that had laid low, so low that little was known or circulated about these anti-government conspirators; but, it was almost certain that intellectuals had started the group. Former intellectuals, that is... Education had gone to die alongside the ashes of burnt books still cooling in the pits of the Colonies, where all trash was sent.

They must have been deeply intelligent people, if the richness of their name betold anything. The Livers. Those who wished for life, who in their revolutionary fervor found a way to live in a manner that our society had forgotten, that our society had forbidden. Liver, as in the seat of emotion, in even older times, the time of classic literature. Liver, as in the organ whose function was to filter blood and pass it along to the rest of the body. The liver, a detoxifying agent.

Our society was a body full of poison, a body that needed to be detoxified. Needed to be suffused with new energy, to become healthy once more.

Liver, a name which carried in it resonances of what this region used to be known as, a name that carried a proud tradition with it. Liverpool.

It was a group that longed for the old days at the same time that it existed to fight for something new.

A new life.

_Life._

*

The Assembly left everyone in a frenzied state. We all tried to hide it, but it was impossible to quash the energy that suffused every room, every glance, every molecule of our bodies.

It was like being electrocuted gently. Silently.

The only man who seemed unfazed was my captain, Jordan. This was a relief, as we still had a Ceremony to go through that night.

When evening fell, and everyone had taken their customary positions, I wondered if his wife had heard of today’s earlier proceedings. If he had told her—warned her of what was to come.

I was not sure either way, but under her appraising glance, I felt that she must know something. She seemed a woman of great intelligence, if a bit dulled from years of disuse, but still – there was a sharpness in her look that told of once-great depths.

Rumor is, I heard later, that she had once been an intellectual; this may have been gossip circulated by jealous fellow-wives, however. (There was nothing quite so dangerous as having reason for the government to suspect you, for nothing other than being intelligent. An intelligent woman, no less.) It would not do to underestimate a woman like her.

I wondered if there were other things she might know about.

At this moment, the Bessie finished her duties and exited the room. Almost as if in a daze, lost in thoughts, I felt Jordan slot in behind me, and it was like the absence—the gap that had opened up between us before the Ceremony—had been erased. For a moment, I found myself thinking that I was in his office, that it was just the two of us.

Wishful thinking.

Dangerous.

The touch of his forearm snaking past me brought me back into the current moment, back into reality. As we carried on with the Ceremony, I could feel his beard tickle my neck, feel the graze of sharp teeth following. Could feel the sweat beading on his skin, transferring to my own.

Such miniscule touches that spoke volumes: Be careful. I’m watching you. I have been watching you. You’re mine.

You’re here.

I don’t know how much time had passed. As if impelled by an invisible force, I found myself rushing headlong into release. It’s sooner than usual, I thought. Surprised by my own body, I blinked back tears of sweat.

The room is hot, as if stoked by these secrets that we keep.

And somehow, I know that she knows. Usually unmoved by the proceedings, she now nods at me. The movement is almost imperceptible, but I see her.

She sees me. She sees what I have been doing with her husband, what I am to her husband.

She sees, and somehow… somehow she seems to approve. Or at least, accept.

So strange, this all is, that I feel as if I am floating outside my body as I (my eyes) see her repeat the gesture, this time for Jordan. Her captain. My captain.

Somehow, she knows. But there is no wrath.

Just acceptance, and love for her husband. A love that she extends to me.

I almost feel undeserving. I want to thank her, but there are no words we can speak aloud without risking exposure. (The Bessie is still outside.) I think she knows what she has done for me though, done for us.

Men like us.

If only all the world were like my captain’s wife.

*

We are all exempt from training the next day, the officials still configuring guidelines for changing circumstances.

My captain and I take the opportunity to revel in each others’ company. His wife has gone to another wife’s house, to sit and drink tea in their parlor, I presume, with the children being taken care of by Marthas in the adjoining room. (I find that I know nothing about women’s lives, especially those of the wives. In my head it is picturesque… but I know that they must have their own dramas. Their own reasons for distrust and dismay.)

If not for the Marthas, and Bessies, and guard-dogs, the Captain and I would have the house to ourselves. As it is, we cannot be sure that these prying eyes will look kindly on our trespasses, so we shut ourselves in his office once Milly has assured us safe passage there.

As he turns to stand guard, I catch what almost looks like a small smile on Milly’s face, before he has fully faced the opposite direction.

What strange occurrences, these days. Perhaps I know nothing about the men of this world, after all.

My captain offers me his hand, as we walk into his office. Because he can, I suppose. Because we can, in this moment, allow our bodies to act as they want.

And oh, my body _wants_.

It is as if a flood has been unleashed, cleansing my body in its wake. I feel rebirthed, baptized by this man.

I’ve never felt that I needed someone quite like I need him. At least, not since I can remember. Jordan, I breathe. “Jordan,” I repeat out loud.

He looks at me with incredible fondness, and my heart swells. The smile he gives me dimples his cheeks, and he suddenly looks ten years younger.  
  
I realize that I do not know how old he is. And because I can, I ask him.

He pauses a moment to think. Twenty-eight, he tells me.

I look at him with appraising eyes. He is but a young man. Younger than me, if I remember my age correctly. I look at him, and add this new information to my mental catalogue, a precious inventory.

I want to know everything about him. I want to know answers to questions I cannot even fathom, details of his life that no one else knows. He has a past that he remembers, unlike me, and I want to share in it, to help him relive it through new eyes.

But we have the luxury of a day, only a day, and I have lived in waiting long enough. My hands reach for his face, and I hold him. We are suspended in this moment for a second, for a lifetime, before he moves: tilts his face down, and with my palms still cupping his cheeks, he kisses me, long and slow. It is a kiss that means something but demands nothing. I feel that we could stay like this for days. For this entire day, if we wanted.

He seems content to let me set the pace, and we kiss lazily for another span of forever, until I slowly slide my hands down his neck, stopping for a moment at his broad shoulders, moving to grasp his biceps. They are so strong, and I want them wrapped around me, gripping me as we hold each other in bed.

There is no bed here, in his office, but it’s a thought that I file away for later. I hope that there will be a later, another time, another day.

It is still the present moment now, however, and my hands have currently strayed. His torso is like a statue’s, carved out of marble, but more pliant: warmer, more alive. I want to see it, want to reveal the landscape of skin beneath his clothing, so I do: I take off his shirt, a casual cotton one that he has worn on this day off from duty, and continue my exploration.

His hand has moved to grasp me by the scruff of the neck; I expect his hold to be possessive—which would not be unwanted, any touch from him being welcome—but it is not. It is almost tender, a softness that seems incongruous to the whole situation, and I could almost cry just from knowing that in the midst of turmoil, this man has found a way to cultivate kindness and love. For me, no less.

But my eyes are otherwise preoccupied, the wide expanse of my captain opening itself to me, inviting my gaze. I reach for his trousers, looking to him for permission which is swiftly granted. I thumb at the button and the space that opens between our bodies is almost inexorable.

I want him, I want this, I want him, my brain repeats. “I want you,” I tell him, and he groans into my hair. “Ads,” he breathes, and I do not know what he means by this word, but catalogue it for later inquiry.

My hands have stilled at his waist, and he takes this moment to reach for the hem of my shirt, and I raise my arms to let him gently slide the coarse fabric over my head.

“You look so good,” he whispers into my ear, and I shudder. It feels like forever since someone has said things like this to me, touched me like this- and perhaps it has been forever. But Jordan is here now, breathing “Fuck” into the curve of my neck, as if he is admiring me. Cherishing me.

And I worship him in return, pressing my palms into every divot of his body, and I find myself eventually resting my knees on the deep green carpet, reaching up to slide his trousers down past his thighs. They pool at his feet, and as he steps out of them, I greedily reach upward again, to divest him of his briefs. He is fully unclothed now, and I stare up at him, eyes wide. I want to take everything in.

I want to take everything in, so I do. I nuzzle my cheek up against his left thigh, solid flesh. I realize then what this must look like to outside eyes, if they were to see us now: me, kneeling at his feet, like a servant.

But that is not the story here, and I am happy to stay there in this position, as I take him into my mouth. I feel and hear him groan, a sound that sends shivers down my spine. I lap at him, testing the weight of him on my tongue. He tastes of clean water, like he must have showered before meeting me at my room. Running water, even for the elite captains, is a precious commodity.

But perhaps I am a precious commodity too.

And maybe it’s blasphemous, but I think to myself that he, to me, is too. He is mine.

I wrap my fist around the base of his cock and suck hard. His body twitches, but then he stills, controlling himself from pushing forward. He is letting me take the lead, and I take him deeper in my mouth to show my appreciation. That he would extend this level of respect in the midst of full-blown lust… My captain is indeed a man to behold. A man of lost times. (A man of times that perhaps never existed at all.)

He runs a finger along my cheek, tracing where he has caused it to bulge, and the touch goes straight to my cock. I whimper around him, and he closes his eyes. Moans. I stare up at him from under my lashes, taking my time, until it is no longer enough.

I release him with a _pop_ , the sound obscene, and I am almost out of breath. (No amount of training could prepare me for this.)

“I want you,” seemingly in repetition, but I know that he knows exactly what I mean. I want him inside me, body draped over me, all of him on and _in_ all of me.

It’s almost disgraceful how desperate I am, but I refuse to feel shame for this. For any of this, for loving and wanting a man like Jordan so badly.

He wants me too. We are together in this, despite any differences between the two of us. We want one another.

And we take it, because we can. He takes my hand, pulls me up onto my feet, and leads us over to a couch. It is lavishly spacious, and I am grateful, though I wonder how large his bed must be if even his office furniture is this luxurious. A far cry from the sparseness of my Spartan bedroom.

He beckons for me to lie down across the furniture, as he walks to his desk to rummage through a drawer. We don’t need a condom—the only other person I have fucked is his wife, and all three of us have gone through rigorous testing of all kinds, to ensure health and viability. But the lubricant is necessary, and much appreciated. That he keeps a bottle in his office is… interesting. But I don’t have long to ponder, as he comes back to crawl on top of me.

“Why are you still wearing clothing?” he asks, and I glance down. Watch him drag his hands across my bare stomach, all lean muscle, and then tug fabric down. Everything comes off in one fell swoop, and suddenly, we are all flesh, pressing into more flesh. Together.

I feel every inch of him, and _every inch_ of him responds. Throbbing, slick, he slides his cock across mine below, wrenching a keening gasp out of me. I almost can’t believe how incredibly hot this is, that this is happening to me, with me. With Jordan.

He continues grinding down on me as a hand moves from my flank, down, down further, reaching below me. My body arches in response, giving him access. He looks me up and down, eyes stopping at the swell of my ass, and he releases me only to capture my body in his gaze.

He pours contents from the bottle over his fingers, some of the slick liquid dripping onto my abdomen.

My body stretches under his, and he grasps my hip with one of his hands, longest finger slotting into the space between soft thigh and flushed, painfully hard cock. Tinged red, all blood having rushed to that location.

His other hand, slicked up, reaches back down, resting at my hole. He presses in slowly, carefully, in, now supporting my ass with the left hand that was seconds ago caressing my thigh.

After a few minutes, prepping me deliberately and unhurriedly, he stops. I keen at the loss of him inside me, only to gasp as he moves down, licking a curious tongue across where his finger had been. Licks _in_ , followed by a finger, then two. Reaches around me and flips me over, arching my ass up into his face, as he then spreads my cheeks. Alternates between tongue and fingers, adding more, until at last my body is ready, until I am shaking with need.

All this time, my dick has been untouched, leaking steadily against my stomach. He wraps one hand around me, as his other helps guide him into me. Finally, _finally_ , inside me.

He takes his time, and I feel him everywhere.

The rest, and I’ve already said too much, is a blur of heat, and hunger, and bodies. He is inside me, and I am his, and he is mine.

We consummate what we could not before, surrounded by dark wood, soft cushions, and testaments to the man he once was, relics of the past that has brought him here. I have no such objects, but I willingly share with him everything else that I own. My body, my whispered adoration, my heart.

Perhaps I am naïve to think that this could end well. But we are both aware of the danger, and at least I am willing to risk it all for his singular touch.

I risk it all, here in this moment, and in future moments that I will think about later in the darkness of my room, because the life I had before? Waiting, fucking, and waiting again?

It was no life at all.

*

“I felt less like a man, these years,” he later confides in me. Sated, we are still on the couch, though we have shifted positions. I have laid my head in his lap, and he strokes my hair as I listen in disbelief. How could he, in his position of power, have not felt like a man? He shakes his head, as if reading my thoughts. “Not like you, of course. Nothing could compare to the hell those lot have put you through.” His hand stills on my head, before starting up again. “What we have put you through, I suppose.” He is quiet for a moment.

He keeps stroking my hair, playing with the ends. He adjusts my face, gently, so that I am looking straight up into his own. I feel lifetimes pass as we stare into each other, without judgment, before he speaks again.

“I saw something in you that reminded me of myself." His eyes blink slowly. "The old me,” he adds.

My look must then have been incredulous, because he clarifies. “Not the you I had custom to see during Ceremony, or Assembly. You were no man then…” and he says this not in mean spirit, but states it as a fact. One that I already knew.

He continues. “But one day, I had chance to pass by the training grounds, and… And then. It was then, that I took notice.”

He had immediately requested me as a stud, he tells me, had thumbed through every piece of paperwork he could find, to know what he could do to have me. I think back to the moment before, when I was undressing him. I ask, quietly: “Ads. Earlier, you said this word. What does it mean?”

He looks at me with his large eyes, something sad in them. I know the answer before he opens his mouth, but I need to hear it anyway. “Adam. Your name, back then. Your name was Adam.”

I thought that when he had given me his own name, Jordan, that it was a gift that could not be exceeded. That “Jordan Henderson” was a peak, an unsurpassable acme. But this.

My name… to have my own name back. I am almost paralyzed by this knowledge, so significant an effect it had.

Jordan reaches into a cabinet, and slowly pulled out a folder. He opens it, and hands it to me. _Adam Lallana_ , it reads. Next to those letters, an inked mark: Property of Jordan Henderson.

But that doesn’t matter. I know the facts, know that by this government I was an object, one that belonged to him. But now, I belong to him more deeply. I can belong to him, because now I belong to myself.

To have a self, once more, was a gift I could never repay. But, as I looked at him with glistening eyes, I thought, I can give him myself fully. Not as an object, but as me. Adam.

Things between us would never be the same, I thought. Life would never be the same again. And it wasn’t.

To be; to be a man. Being.

It was like a wait was over. A weight had been lifted from my soul.

No longer just a stud, but a man first.

Adam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If things go to plan, the next chapter will be the last. I’m taking a day trip soon so it might take me a little longer to write and upload, but, I have a pretty solid idea of how it will end. Still open to suggestions though, so if you have ideas, please let me know in the comments or leave me a message on my tumblr: <http://dr-azumi-fujita.tumblr.com> (formerly adleriarty)
> 
> (Comments and kudos give me life.) <3


	4. Waiting

The first time I see Jordan walk onto the field for training, I feel my heart nearly stop.

Though some of the other captains who’ve joined have opted for all-black kits, he is wearing all red, just like us. Just like me.

He stands out like a sore thumb while the rest traipse in, and somehow he still stands out once he’s among us, the studs. I catalogue the quick, darting glances of Reds around me. What on earth is he thinking, singling himself out so? Does he have a death wish?

It appears that he notices the stir he has caused, and quietly, but with an enviable firmness of tone, says: “Carry on.”

Not all of the captains have joined. In fact, the captains of the more aggressive studs are noticeably absent. These studs indeed carry on, though with a slightly heightened level of posturing. Not violent, but something in their movements suggests that they are raring to go, to prove that they’re still dominant out here on the fields. Anywhere else, they would fall in line with their captains, but without their captains they are eager to make a statement.

My usual training partner and I glance at each other, before walking steadily toward our respective captains. Sturridge greets his stud with a firm slap on the shoulder, a gesture that is not out of line due to the young age of my training partner and his status as stud-in-waiting.

Jordan and I must settle for a look—a brief but heated glance, our bodies only connected yet simultaneously separated by the air between us—before moving toward the government officials to begin warm-ups. I long for a hand at the small of my back which never comes, but am simultaneously glad that Jordan is now choosing to be careful. Enough damage is done by his choice in kit color, and I can still spot a few furtive glances shot in our direction.

I shut off my mind as we go through the beginning warm up movements, letting muscle memory take over.  Once we get to partnered leg swings, I reach out as if for my normal training partner, only to get the shoulder height slightly wrong. My body registers the difference before my mind catches up.

Right; today is different. Today, I am with Jordan.

I dare to look him straight in the eyes then, and he reciprocates. It’s like something clicks, like the air has shifted between us and transmutated into something… something I can’t name. But it’s like alchemy, and we are locked into one another.

We carry on, completely in sync, until the whistle blows.

Time to play.

*

It is glorious. Playing with Hendo is nothing short of glorious.

We play five-a-side with Sturridge and his stud on our team, plus one stud in goal whose captain has declined to show up, having recently welcomed a new child into the family. I remember there being a huge ceremony, several moons ago. The whole county had gathered for the occasion. It had been the first birth in several years. In fact, the stud had only recently returned to training, having been exempted the first few weeks as a prize for his efforts, regardless of the fact that it had been his captain’s wife who’d done all the work of giving birth. Still, the fruits of a fertile stud must be rewarded, and rewarded he was. (Until it was time to return to duty.)

As a team, we work together beautifully. Jordan and I link up again and again, with my usual training partner making long runs and his captain scoring one magnificent goal after another. Even having never played together before, it is as if there is a touch of the divine on the field with us.

When the final whistle blows, I find myself utterly exhausted, but exhilarated. Our side is all smiles, Sturridge even breaking into a silly little dance. Training matches are hardly ever joyous, but on this momentous occasion, even a government official would be callous to not allow our brief celebration.

We clatter together at the sidelines as the second match-up makes preparations on the field, and I allow myself— _just this once_ , I think—to relax. My body, languid, tucks up into Jordan’s side, as we sit on the artificial lawn. He grins, wiping a stray dirt stain on my knee from a tackle earlier, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.

At first, I think it is my body’s reaction to Jordan, so close, touching me. It’s not until a few seconds later, when Jordan’s hands have safely retreated to his own body, that I get that niggling sensation again, and notice a pair of eyes trained on us. On me.

It is one of the new studs. He came over from a nearby county. Rumor had it that he was too aggressive for their system, and a captain had ordered him sent away. He was relatively short and stocky, incredibly muscled and known for a nasty attitude: a certain arrogance that had not flared up during his short duration here, but… still he was staring at us.

His captain was Klopp, one of the old guard and a man respected by all, including his new stud it would seem. Perhaps his captain was keeping him in line, or perhaps he had truly changed his ways.

We would have to be careful though. Jordan too was of the old guard, and if this new stud’s allegiance could be bought by one of the younger captains… there could be danger brewing, and it wouldn’t end well for Jordan.

For us, I think, and suddenly the elation of the day seems a far and distant past.

*

Jordan and I do not see each other again until the following night, in his office. We are both exercising caution, but cannot resist the temptation—nay, the necessity—of seeing one another.

We kiss, briefly, before turning our attentions to the events of the past few days. I alert him of the situation, telling him of the new stud. He in turn fills me in on several dynamics he had been witnessing amongst the captains. Our county was relatively small, as were most, which meant that everyone could and did keep tabs on one another.

He tells me to keep an eye for one in particular. Fabinho, a new captain, who had also recently moved here from one of the neighboring counties. He is young and eager to prove himself, Jordan cautions me, but he could perhaps prove an ally. We will have to be careful though. Because he is new—has fresh eyes, not yet dulled from tradition—he could expose our secret if our gazes lingered too long on one another, if our touches told a story that would give us away, if somehow we gave away any hint of our change in situation.

If we were anything other than master and slave.

I am struck by Jordan’s use of the word, ally, but check my curiosity for a later time when I see my captain’s questioning eyes. I touch his cheek, beckoning him to speak.

“Should I not wear the red next time?” He asks me, genuinely, as if I have a say in the matter; as if I were a peer, as if I were someone whose opinion mattered. Like I do, matter.

I want to tell him to wear it again, that he deserves to stand out, but we must be careful. Perhaps the all-black will be better, next time, and he quietly concurs. “It was meant as a sign of solidarity, but perhaps I have misjudged the situation. I thought that more captains were…”

His voice trails off. I sense that there is something significant lurking there beneath the surface, something that he wants to tell me. But something in him is unsure. What other secret could he be hiding?

“I am with you, Jordan,” I say as I place my hands over his. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. Trust me.”

He looks down out our hands, joined together. “I have to be sure that you can carry this burden. I don’t want to endanger you further. But…”

Here he looks back up, into my face. It is as if he is searching for the answer there, in the irises of my eyes. He must somehow see something there, something worthy, because what he tells me next is a revelation.

More accurately, perhaps, a revolution.

*

Over the past few years, he has been secretly exchanging communiques with members of the Livers. It turns out that the stud before me, Lucas, had been one of the rebel group, and Jordan had helped him fake his death in order to escape and join the rebel alliance on the outskirts of town, where they had a fortress. The Kop, it was called.

Ever since, Jordan had been feeding them insider information, helping them to formulate tactics. It was a long game, and only two other captains were in on the scheme: Klopp and Sturridge. For years they had been working together to piece together a plan on the inside, to coincide with the Livers’ fringe efforts.

In turn, the Livers promised to help the three captains gain safe passage out of the county, along with their wives and families. They could include their studs and the wives could include their handmaidens, if they wished.

Sturridge had long decided to include his stud-in-waiting. Jordan admitted that he had initially sought to become closer with me in order to gauge my receptiveness, to see if I would be willing to risk my life for the rebellion. (It had become so much more than that, he told me later, his mouth counting each notch of my spine.)

“I had to be sure,” he told me, rubbing longer fingers across my wrist in a reassuring gesture. “I am, now.”

As he continued to fill me in on the details of the plan, I marveled. Gossip had hinted at a rebellion hidden away, but the rumors seemed to paint these forces as a myth, a child’s story that only compounded the inevitability of life continuing as it was. The status quo, buttressed by the knowledge that if such a rebellion existed, they were powerless to do anything—or worse—had chosen not to act on our behalf. Not yet. Perhaps never.

But here was confirmation that such a group did exist, and that they had been plotting all along to overthrow the existing state of affairs, the system of drudgery and power imbalance. Here, from my very own captain’s lips, came words of hope. Defiance.

A way out.

I had scarcely dared to believe that this could all be true, but here it was, laid out in front of me. And all that was left was to decide my place in it all.

Jordan asked if I would run away with him, and I told him yes. Not unthinkingly, not on the spur of the moment, but the answer was yes.

I would do anything for him, with him, but this? This, I was doing for myself.

*

In the days that followed, I could hardly be expected to view the world around me in the same way. Every stud I passed, every glance that met mine, I would think: does he know? Is he in on it? Could he be like Jordan’s previous stud, and I had just never noticed?

How could one tell a rebel apart from another Red?

I wondered how many studs who had been sent away had actually made it out elsewhere, intact. What if they had been a rebel, rooted out by the government? Or they could be out there, somewhere, working for a cause. Our cause.

I suppose I am one of them, now that I know.

We planned to run away immediately after the next moon cycle. After the next Ceremony. Jordan had arranged for Klopp’s stud to attack him on the pitch. It would look real, would have to look real for our plan to succeed. This attack would give Jordan an excuse to disappear. Gossip would be circulated that the government found him a threat, after his move to allow captains in on training sessions. The official line would be that Jordan had chosen to transfer to a neighboring county. The truth would be the escape.

I was full of anxiety. How would I be able to discern a real attack on Jordan, if it happened? What if Klopp’s stud were untrustworthy; what if he, or someone else, told the government, and they moved to have Jordan disappeared for real?

What was real, what was just for show? I could no longer tell anymore.

On the night of the escape, a guard-dog would come for me. I would be in my room, waiting. I would wait for the guard-dog to initiate the customary greeting, would reply, and then listen for him to say Allez, repeated three times. This would be my cue to open the door, and be escorted to a transport car.

Guard-dogs had access to vehicles in order to chauffer their captains on matters of business, usually meetings with government officials. They also used them to transport studs transferring to other counties, or, dump them off in the Colonies. (I hoped the latter would not be my fate.)

The car would have no distinguishing features, nothing that could give us away. Once the plan was in motion, we would not have a chance to discuss anything further. If anything went wrong, we would be left to our own devices, our own quick thinking.

I was hoping that after all these years of disuse, my brain would be up to the task. But more so, I was hoping that it would not have to be tested.

Hoping.

I was hoping.

*

The night after Jordan unveiled the plan in full felt interminable. The moon too was nearly full, a waxing gibbous. It was to be a blood moon, a total lunar eclipse that would tinge the moonlight red: a coincidence that seemed impossible, and was. The Livers had planned for this, their calculations being as meticulous as they were.

Days and nights passed in a haze. Jordan still trained with us, as did Sturridge, in all-black. The looks he received were still numerous, and I was in a constant state of arousal: not sexual, but spurred by nerves.

We were careful not to meet in his office too often, lest there be a government informant in the household staff. In addition, a visiting government dignitary from the county next-door had come to visit, and was staying in one of my captain’s spare bedrooms. This was not an unheard-of occurrence, but given the circumstances was highly inconvenient. Terrifying, even, if I were to admit my true emotions on the matter.

Jordan’s emotions were more tightly lidded; I couldn’t tell what he was feeling at times, which was the norm that we had only so recently deviated from. It was strange seeing him almost as I had once viewed him: cold and unfeeling. I knew now that, underneath that exterior, he was anything but.

There was a fire that raged through him. A rankling against injustice. A lust and passion. A yearning for a life that _meant_ something.

To have kept that so well-hidden all these years… not a feat a lesser man could have borne. I was glad to have him on my side.

At my side.

So the days and nights passed, until the day of action arrived. There was a calendar in my captain’s office, a relic. I traced my fingers over the squares, the night before. I had been there, in his office, in his arms. Everything was too much; we did not even kiss, much less give ourselves over to the calling of our passions; but we held each other tight, as if to join our skin together, to meld our bodies into one unit. So that when day broke, we would be in sync, just as we were on the field. Ready for anything.

Ready for everything to kick off.

I traced trembling fingers over the days and weeks, marking out with my hands the day it was all to be decided. July 27. A symphony of curves and straight lines, the rounded letters softening the terse violence of the l, the y, the 7. I was etching the feeling of the day into my body, and with Jordan pressed so closely into my back, into his as well. This day would be the beginning of a new us; I wanted to absorb the day into my being, our linked bodies. I wanted both to hasten its arrival yet delay it: to stay right here, in my captain’s strong arms, forever in this moment.

I wanted to linger in this embrace, a promise without words. A promise to stay true, to be together, even when tomorrow could bring the end of our union. Perhaps we would never play together again, after tomorrow. Perhaps we would never be able to go on a date, as he had promised: a real date. Perhaps we would cease to be real, cease to live in anything but memories. (Memories… if even that.) Perhaps.

Perhaps we should remain in this moment, I thought. Perhaps we should never move on to tomorrow. Perhaps we should never move from this moment.

But, the day arrived.

*

The day arrived, and I was escorted to the field for training, where I saw my old training partner. Suddenly I realized that, in the rush of all our planning, Sturridge and my training partner would not be joining. Not this time, at least. I had almost forgotten what Jordan had told me; that they would stay behind, to care for my captain’s wife and family, until the Livers were ready to implement the second phase of their plans. Sturridge, his wife-to-be, and his stud would then join us, along with Jordan’s wife and their two children.

But they would have to wait longer than us; an unthinkable wait. It seemed cruel. But what could we do? The plan was already in action, the ball already rolling. All we could do now was to let it sweep us up in its inertia, to follow Livers’ orders.

I was good at following orders. (At least, I had been, before Jordan.)

When Klopp’s stud rammed into Jordan during that day’s match, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The tackle had come in from his left side, and I could hear the sound of spikes meeting thigh as Jordan fell in an arc toward the hard ground.

From the sidelines, Milly jumped to his feet, intending to run onto the pitch, but was stopped. From the angle in which I was positioned, I couldn’t tell who it was who put their body in the way, but I thought I saw a flash of blue. A government official, then. (I was told later, after training was long over, that Jordan’s guard-dog had suffered a head injury then, and had been taken away to the doctor. Fifteen stitches. He must have been in the converted gymnasium for nearly half the day.) This was not part of the plan, I must have thought in the back of my head.

At the time, though, the bulk of my focus was reserved for my captain. My eyes roved over his body, anxious to catalog and account for every inch of him. His face was arranged in a grimace, and as if under a microscope, I could see the beads of sweat, several drops of blood where the spikes had met tender flesh. Shorts bunched up, I could see the tense muscles of his thighs, a physio’s adept hands checking for injuries. Those same hands hovering over the back of his thigh, which Jordan had clutched in pain.

I ached to draw closer, to offer him a touch, anything that would soothe him. I longed so badly to be at his side that my fingernails, even blunt as they were, cut half-moons into both of my palms, and my teeth clenched so tightly that they ached, later: a lingering and sympathetic pain.

But we were already causing a scene, and we had to keep up appearances. I felt the eyes of my training partner bore into the back of my neck; I refused to look at him, for fear that I would give it all away. But it was not just his gaze that I felt.

Several dozen eyes were trained on Jordan, my captain, but I could feel several on me as well. Fabinho, I recognized, from my earlier briefings in Jordan’s office. A few studs I did not know by name—obviously, as I had only recently learned my own—a couple of them being the aggressive studs I usually steered clear of.  A few stares from guard-dogs as well, including one I did not recognize from previous training sessions. He must be new, I thought.

Was this all according to plan? What was real, and what was not?

I still didn’t know the answer to that question.

Jordan was carefully lifted onto a stretcher, a contraption that had not changed much from the old (and even older) days. I finally took a step forward, unable to stop myself. Jordan’s eyes immediately met mine, and his mouth thinned. I was not to approach.

There would be time for touches later, once we had escaped. All the time in the world. But for now, I would have to stand my ground, and wait.

*

Jordan was taken off to a special facility to be checked out by proper doctors, the kind that would not proposition you, the kind whose probing fingers were clinical, not lascivious.

Luxury doctors, in this day and age.

We were ordered to return to training, but my mind was not in it. Our side lost, and as we were the second match-up of the day, we were sent back to change, freshen up, and be marched back to our rooms. To wait.

Waiting.

_Waiting._

On the way back, I hear several voices behind me. Just low enough to be considered secretive, but not so hushed as to go unheard. It is one of the aggressive studs, speaking to a newer one, who I don’t dislike but seems to have fallen in with a bad crew.

I see a slight nod in my direction. It is not meant for me, but for the new stud. The other says to him, as I slow down to better overhear: “That one’s captain. ‘E’s the one causing all this here ruckus. Not jus’ today, you hear me. All the time.” He leans in closer to the new one: “Rumor ‘as it that ‘e is workin’ with a secret group.”

My heart stops. How could he know? This was not part of the plan. My adrenaline spikes, and my heart is now beating again, faster than ever.

After a pause, I hear him start up again. “That captain’s a troublemaker, I tell ya. I ‘eard ‘is decision to train with us? Selfish, that. You ‘eard that he spoke out at assembleh? Yeah, I ‘eard it’s cos ‘e’s headin’ up a force to keep tabs on us, like, us studs. Supersedes the gov’, gives more power to th’ captains. Up to no good, I tell ya. Almost glad he got smashed up today, yeah. Maybe would’ve done it meself, if not.”

I am almost shaking with rage, but push that anger down.

Walk on.

*

When I was finally back in my room, it seemed that the wait went on forever. The blank white walls surrounding me did nothing to alleviate the tension; there was nothing to hold my attention. No one to hold me close, to assure me that everything would be alright.

This, I thought, was what hell must be.

Hours must have passed, and I did not move. I sat on the bed, lamp to my right, door to my left. My hands gripped the sheet beneath me, crisp, starched, white. My fingers disrupted the clean lines of the coarse linen, clenching, then going limp. Clenching again. Listless, again. Hours passed, and I did not move.

Could the stud I overheard have been right? Could this all have been a plot, to get me in Jordan’s good favor, to pull the wool over my eyes? No, I thought. He couldn’t possibly. What I felt, what _we_ felt between us, it had to be real.

Right?

This was the trouble of no longer knowing what was real or not.

But I had no reason to trust the word of a disgruntled stud over the love of my captain…

I faintly registered voices outside my room. (This prison, I thought. A prison more than it had ever been, on the eve of release. Escape, or possible death. Either way, release from this hell of waiting.) I could hear the Marthas preparing for dinner, the sharp thuds of blades meeting wooden cutting boards, the softer and more sinuous sounds of knives slicing through flesh of poultry, summer vegetables, proper hearty fare in preparation for the Ceremony. An eternity passed this way, my body unmoving on the cold white bed, listening to the sounds of the household bustling, coming to life.

Until it was time.

The guard-dog that greeted me at the door was not Milly. (This was not part of the plan, I thought.) It was, instead, a man that I recognized from Jordan’s detailed notes as Keita. One of Sturridge’s guard-dogs. Milly must have been more badly injured from earlier in the day, I thought. (This was not part of the plan.) But, Jordan trusted Sturridge, and must then trust his man Keita. (But this was not part of the plan.)

Keita escorted me silently to the bedroom. He took position outside the room, as was customary for Ceremony. He did not smile. I almost missed Milly—in fact, I did. Milly would have been part of the plan. This was not part of the plan.

My mind was beginning to race, and I could feel myself starting to panic. This is no time to lose your wits, I told myself. This was not part of the plan, but the plan was already in action. I would have to make due.

I entered the room, and the first thing my eyes saw was Jordan. As if impelled by magnetic force, Jordan the north pole to my south, I scarcely felt my feet move toward him, as I took my place at his left. At the end of the bed, the Bessie was already in position. (Deep breaths, I told myself, and did. This was part of the plan.)

The rest of the Ceremony was unremarkable. All according to procedure, all according to plan. I felt Jordan’s arms bracketing my sides, but it was not the heated touch I had become accustomed to; it was as if he were entirely devoid of passion, his mind elsewhere.

It probably was.

Soon, we might be elsewhere, if all went according to plan.

I finished, and the Ceremony was over. Just the waiting left to endure. I looked into the face of my Captain’s wife, as if asking her to understand. As if apologizing, that she could not come with us. Not yet, not this time.

I think she knew.

Outside the room once more, I was met by Keita, who took me to my room.

Waiting, again.

Waiting…

*

Finally, the hour came. I heard footsteps outside my room. A sharp knock.

“With hope in your heart,” a voice says into the wood of the door. “You’ll never walk alone,” I return.

“Allez,” I hear.

I wait. And wait. Oh god, this was not part of the plan, I think, and start to panic again-

“Allez. Allez.” I hear, even more quietly. The opening of the door swallows up the rush of air that leaves my lungs. _Allez_ repeated three times, just like Jordan said.

But the man on the other side of the door is not Milly, and is not Keita. I recognize him as Becker, one of the guard-dogs in Fabinho’s squad, whom I had also spotted roaming by the pitch earlier today.

(Earlier today seems already like forever ago. Time seems unreal, right now. Has been, for the past week of waiting, knowing. Waiting, again.)

I know nothing of this man other than his name and affiliation. I suppose that, though I know nothing, I can do nothing but place blind trust in him; in this guard-dog, in his captain, in _my_ captain. I must trust him and hope that, though this is not the exact plan we discussed, he will not betray us all.

For such a large man, he pads through the halls with incredible noiselessness. I seem slight, almost dainty, in comparison to his heft. He could crush me, if he wanted to. I am grateful that, as of yet, he has not chosen to do so.

Yet.

I cannot quash the anxiety, the fear racing through my blood. It is a bodily terror, a biological instinct telling me to flee, or fight. As I can do neither, I force my feet to plod softly through the corridor, leading me to uncertain fate.

Finally, we reach the front door. The new guard-dog opens it and ushers me through, out onto the gravel. A car awaits, as according to plan. Black, nondescript. I am led into the backseat, and the guard-dog circles round to take the driver’s seat.

I am so unsure, uncertain of these circumstances. What is happening? What has happened to the plan? What am I signing myself over for?

As the car reaches the road, I feel the difference, the smoothness of black cement below us in the black of night. I am in a black car. Above and around, all blackness.

Waiting.

I think hurried thoughts, warring with one another. Will I see Jordan soon? Where is Keita? (Where is Milly? Is he okay?) Where is Jordan, has he already left? Is _he_ okay? (I had seen a bandage wrapped securely around his thigh during the ceremony, and seem to be only just registering it fully now, in the backseat of this car.)

My mind and the car race forward together, waiting for the moon to turn red.

*

I am waiting. The car speeds onward, into the darkness of night, the uncertainty of the future… hopefully, onward toward Jordan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _graphic by me[on tumblr](http://dr-azumi-fujita.tumblr.com/post/176987292356/borne-in-redin-a-world-where-men-have-been)_
> 
> Please don’t kill me! (Gah!) The ending was always meant to be ambiguous and open-ended, I am sorry. ~~(If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you that I personally have great hopes for Alisson with Liverpool, IRL. As for the story… my lips are sealed. But I really like Alisson so... make of that what you will.~~
> 
> Comments and kudos are much appreciated, and have seriously been the only thing that kept me going while I finished this last chapter. (Feel free to yell at me in the comments for leaving you at such an uncertain end!) You can also find me on tumblr here: <http://dr-azumi-fujita.tumblr.com> (formerly adleriarty).
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me for this fic, as it comes to a close (a close that is an open, I suppose). I hope you’ve enjoyed it. All love. <3
> 
> P.S. I could possibly be persuaded to write a coda if you ask real nicely XD


	5. (Coda)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back by popular demand, and by popular I mean by the request of two readers because I really am bad at saying no to people who leave me nice comments, here's a coda to "Borne in Red"! (There. I’ve revealed my Achilles heel: will do anything for validation.)
> 
> This is maybe not the epilogue you were looking for, so feel free to not read it if you thought the fourth chapter came to a suitable end. 
> 
> **Note:** This coda is in the style of Atwood’s “Historical Notes” section of The Handmaid’s Tale. I will warn you that the style is quite different from the previous, main body chapters of the story, but it is not quite a stand-alone because it will make absolutely zero sense if you have not read the other four chapters. Anyways, onwards!

### Notes from the Annual New Liverpool Conference on the Red Annals, New Merseyside University, October 14-15, 2140

 _The following excerpts have been compiled from transcript notes taken during the conference weekend at New Merseyside University. The annual New Liverpool Conference on the Red Annals examines the enigmatic documents known as_ Borne in Red _, a narrative believed to have been recorded during the Red Regime in the early decades of the 2000s, as well as its paratexts._

Opening Address  
_Speaker_ : Edward Chamberlain-Chambers, Department of Queer Anthropology, New Merseyside University

CHAMBERLAIN-CHAMBERS: Hello all, and welcome to the third annual New Liverpool Conference on the Red Annals. First, I must heartily thank New Merseyside University for hosting our conference once again, for the second consecutive year. In addition, a massive thank you to the student organizers of this event, Gini Arnold and Andrea Woodburn, and our donors.

What began as a project by several scholars looking into personal family lineages has bloomed into this exciting enterprise of uncovering the truths of a mysterious span of history, one that has already been long forgotten by the youth of today. As a scholar of Queer Anthropology and myself the grandson of men who lived through what we now know as the Red Regime, there are both personal and professional stakes in popularizing the study of _Borne in Red_ , one of the only remaining personal accounts from the era.

This text has drawn much attention, and even controversy. I use the word “text” here most liberally, as recent research has shown the existing manuscript not in fact to be the original; to hear more on this groundbreaking theory, please attend Gini Arnold’s talk. She is quite brilliant, and I say that without bias, though I am her graduate advisor and as such am obligated to embarrass her through entirely warranted praise. _[audience laughter]_

 _Borne in Red_ is believed to have been discovered during the late decades of the twenty-first century, during an archaeological excavation in what is now known as New Melwood. The text was found transcribed onto vellum, an old technology, and is thought to have been penned in the year 2041, though established research has shown that the story itself was first recorded in 2018, during the height of the Red Regime.

The story tells a tragic tale of a man, aptly named Adam, in a world fallen from paradise. This oppressive society was particularly dangerous for studs, sterile men forced into service of Captains and their Wives, in aid of reproduction. The previous wars had unleashed the consequences of radiation upon most, and those rare individuals whose genes were immune to mutation were at once highly sought-after and, paradoxically, marginalized.

Moreover, homosexuality, though not even fully accepted in the years preceding the Red Regime, became an unthinkable taboo during these decades. The biological and sociological imperative to reproduce and ensure the continuance of human life became rationale for a brutal restriction on same-sex relationships, especially those that had been formally recognized through marriage and civil partnerships. Families were torn apart, and desires repressed.

Queer anthropologists have attempted to study the impact of these anti-homosexual edicts and actions, and _Borne in Red_ has been a boon to research in this field. We know now that homosexuality was forbidden by law, but love, or lust, persisted between men such as Adam and Jordan. While the end of Adam’s story is uncertain, a topic of much discussion that I address in my upcoming presentation, we do know is this: you can take a man, take away his family, his name, and everything important in his life, but you cannot take away his desires, and you cannot quash the calling of something stronger than hatred, something more fierce than fear: you cannot kill love.

But of course, as scholars of the Red Regime, you all already know this, and are probably thinking, when will this chap stop chattering and let us finish our breakfast in peace? _[laughter]_ I’ll leave you to it then. Please join us in Hall J for Panel A in fifteen minutes’ time, and if you haven’t already completed registration with our wonderful volunteers at the welcome desk, please do, where you can pick up a name placard and printed schedule. Until then, tuck in!

[…]

Excerpted Notes from Panel B

**Panel B:** “Interdisciplinary and Paratextual Approaches to _Borne in Red_ ”

 _Moderator:_  
Milicent R. Klavan, Caligari Academy  
_  
Panelists:_

  1. Edward Chamberlain-Chambers, New Merseyside University, “Fact or Fantasy?: Debating the Authenticity of _Borne in Red_ , An Interdisciplinary Project”
  2. Gini Arnold, New Merseyside University: “Of Vellum and Veracity: A Material Studies Approach to _Borne in Red_ ”
  3. Alexander M. Lovren, Evertonian Institute, “Queer Traces: The Sociological History of Same-Sex Partnership from Pre-Red Regime to Post-Red Regime”



CHAMBERLAIN-CHAMBERS: As the narrator himself states in the second volume of _Borne in Red_ , “a story believed so fervently can hold more power than reality.” The question that haunts the text is just this line between fact and fiction. Some scholars have speculated that the stud’s tale might be mere fabrication, a fantasy born of the desperate need for escape from an oppressive regime.

I, however, disagree with these academic theories, despite the dearth of physical evidence to once and truly refute such specious arguments. We may call _Borne in Red_ a mere story, and some indeed might question the need for a concentrated core of study into this text, calling such explorations profligate and self-indulgent. While it is true that studies on the Red Regime have been foremost led by the children and grandchildren of those who lived through this historical era, I believe that Adam is right: stories hold power. And if we are to understand the reality of our past, present, and future, we would do well to heed these stories.

[…] The most promising intellectual work on _Borne in Red_ has been of the intertextual and interdisciplinary variety. My focus as of late, and the subsequently the subject of my forthcoming book, has been on paratexts. Paratexts are the stories, notes, and other such ephemera that surround the main text, in this case _Borne in Red_. Twentieth-century scholar Philippe Lejeune posited that paratexts comprise “the fringe of the printed text which, in reality, controls the whole reading” and as such forms a threshold by which we understand the main text as a bounded entity. While I would push back on the argument that the paratext “controls the whole reading” of the main text, I do believe that the periphery often intrudes on the center, and changes how we read a story.

This sounds all quite abstract though, so let us now apply this approach to the story we are all gathered here to discuss. The story recorded by Adam Lallana may be one of the few first-hand accounts we have of the Livers’ Rebellion and the other events described within, but other stories post-dating Lallana’s account seem to give some idea of what must have happened to Adam and his captain, Jordan Henderson, after the events of _Borne in Red_. Several of these stories, written by unidentified sources, exist in contradiction to each other. But most tell of the two men reuniting at the Livers’ stronghold, the Kop.

Although these stories were written after the events of _Borne in Red_ and do not accompany the manuscript facsimile housed at the New Merseyside Library, I categorize them as paratextual materials because they are almost without fail included as appendices in mainstream publications of the stud’s tale. Skeptics have suggested that due to the varying nature of these paratextual tales, they may be thought experiments or wishful fictions written by travelers who passed through the region once known as Liverpool and had heard this tragic tale of _verboten liebe_ [forbidden love]. These scholars generally also believe that the original tale is pure fantasy.

But while some inconsistencies exist in the tract left by the man who identifies himself as Adam, and even more vagaries and variations exist in the paratexts, several details of both in fact coincide with proven truths. For example, and I am indebted to the work of fellow Red Regime and New Merseyside University colleague Dr. Phillipa F. Moreno, we know that the blood moon described by Adam in the last volume of _Borne in Red_ does in fact coincide with retrospective calculations. Adam mentions in his narrative that the date of this lunar eclipse was July 27, and astronomers have proved that indeed, a blood moon rose on that very date in the year 2018.

Because of the burning of books and banning of education during the Red Regime, it is unlikely that any contemporaries and people writing fictional stories about the regime (as skeptics claim) would have been able to provide such a detail unless they had been there to experience it. I must then forward the conclusion that Adam Lallana was indeed a real person, and that his story holds water.

Details of some paratexts also offer certain truths. Namely, the six still existing today that mention the reunion of Adam and Jordan at the Kop all share certain specifics. Because of the varying prose styles and syntax across stories, we know that these tales were written by different authors. The deviance in yellowing of vellum, which Gini Arnold will further discuss in her presentation following mine, also suggest that the stories were written in slightly different locations. We can then posit that the coinciding details, such as weather reports and other natural phenomena in addition to the dating of important insurgent attacks from the Livers, are truth. It is unlikely that so many authors from different regions would have otherwise included the same exact details in their stories.

_[end of transcript page two]_

GINI ARNOLD: Why would the writer leave the story at such a cliffhanger, if he knew what happened after, if he was writing this account _ex post facto_ (after the fact)? I argue that he did not, in fact, leave the story at the end we have all come to know.

If we study the facsimile of the manuscript, housed at the New Merseyside Library, one can see faint stains of ink on the back of each vellum page. This may suggest that the story continued on after the moment we know as its denouement. Perhaps what we know is not the full story.

One should be cautious, however, in making such claims. Questions remain. Firstly, one must note that the rest of the manuscript is double sided, inked with small script on either side of the vellum. If the story continues, why would the last existing page only have text on the one side of vellum? This would break precedent, and would be impractical, materials having been scarce in the years during and immediately following the regime. (More to follow on this.)

Further, we must remember that the manuscript we consider to be the original text is not even an original. Firstly, what we have now at the Merseyside Library is but a facsimile, carefully made by rebel intellectuals before the original was burned in a government raid (or so we are told).

Secondly, it is believed that the original version of that text must have been a reproduction of the story told through some other mode of transmission. One theory that I have endeavored to prove beyond a doubt is that Adam would have used old army recording systems to save his story orally, as an audio file. This may have been saved on antiquated technology known as CD-ROMs, or perhaps even pressed onto even older tech known as vinyl, and would have remained in this medium until some rebel, or intellectual, or happenstance travelled discovered the disc, listened to it on some platform, and transcribed the audio to written text.

If such is the case, then the story we receive is at least thrice-removed from real events, if we take as an assumption that the story is in fact real. I do, like fellow presenter Dr. Chamberlain-Chambers, believe that Adam Lallana’s tale is for the most part factual.

A brief note on his name: Andrea Woodburn of Merseyside Academy has discovered documents that mention the name Adam Lallana. It is believed that these documents, written prior to the inception of the Red Regime, were authored by Lallana’s father, who was a Free-Mason. Prior to his death, Lallana’s father had secreted away a stash of family documents and miscellanea, which include among them a birth certificate and several other papers that mention the name Adam Lallana.

As for Jordan Henderson, several of his naval captain’s logs have just been uncovered. Stay tuned for what are sure to be promising publications on this remarkable archaeological discovery.

But back to the text itself…

_[end of transcript page fourteen]_

Notes from Question & Answer session for Panel B:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question for all of you, but perhaps mostly for Professor Chamberlain-Chambers and Alex Lovren. First of all, I want to thank you all for the best academic conference panel I have attended in recent years. Wonderful presentations, all of you. But my question is: given all the inconsistencies in the paratexts, as well as a few in _Borne in Red_ itself, what is it that makes you believe so strongly that Adam and Jordan reunited at the Kop? And do you personally think they lived happily ever after? _[some giggles from the audience]_

LOVREN: I’m sure Professor Chamberlain-Chambers will have more evidence to add to this response, but firstly we should remember that in the years following the fall of the Red Regime, homosexuality and other such queer kinships were still not openly spoken about. Several of the post-Borne tales were written in this period of limbo, before society fully threw off the influence of years’ worth of anti-homosexual oppression. And evidence suggests that a few of the stories were even written in the window of time after the Livers’ first round of insurgence and the second and final attacks on the regime that would prove ultimately successful for the rebels. So, it would have been an extreme risk to, first of all, write anything at all, given the anti-intellectual bent of the regime, and secondly, to write about same-sex love succeeding. While of course some scholars persist in suggesting that these tales are simply wish fulfillment, I think they underestimate the effects of fear. I don’t think so many people, and it is suggested that many more post-Borne stories were written but haven’t survived or have not been discovered yet, would have written about Lallana and Henderson’s love affair if it _hadn’t_ been real.

Furthermore, the Livers were more open about same-sex relationships and non-traditional arrangements at the Kop. I think the evidence pretty squarely points to the fact that Lallana and Henderson reunited there, and given that evidence and the fact that the Livers had a high percentage of rebels who identified as queer or participated in same-sex relations, it’s quite likely that the two men would have continued to explore their sexual and romantic relationship at the rebel base camp.

CHAMBERLAIN-CHAMBERS: I am in agreement with Alex here. I would also like once more to plug the work of my advisee here _[gestures toward Gini Arnold]_ who has studied the handwriting of the paratexts in addition to the original _Borne in Red_ manuscript facsimile. The handwriting of one paratext looks identical to the one of the facsimile, suggesting that whoever found the original audio also wrote beyond what we have considered to be the definitive stud’s tale. If this paratext had been discovered alongside the earlier facsimile, it’s possible that _Borne in Red_ would not have ended the way it did: perhaps we would have gotten our happy ending then, with Adam and Jordan reuniting. This is of course, just mine and Gini’s theory at this point, however, one we are looking to prove in an upcoming co-authored article. By the way, if any of you in the audience have more evidence to support this theory, please introduce yourself at the end of the panel or write me an email! We have room and money for a few more scholars on our next archaeological expedition to the Old Merseyside site.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Dr. Chamberlain-Chambers, you mentioned there were more details or… there was more evidence that the story was true and like, coincided with real events and people. Are there any that you didn’t mention in your talk today, that you’d be willing to share with us here?

CHAMBERLAIN-CHAMBERS: Thank you for the question! Yes, there were so many more things that I wished to include in the presentation but couldn’t, due to the twenty-minute time limit (which I did try my best to adhere to, although Milicent here did give me quite a scare when she held up the five-minute card. Apologies for rushing the end of my presentation; if you need access copies, I do have a couple print-outs in my briefcase that I would be happy to share.) As for additional evidence, one regards Adam’s former lover, Danny Ings. Adam mentions that Danny would have been a good fit for a guard-dog, and indeed, evidence suggests that he was a guard for a captain in a neighboring county, the region once known as Southampton. It is believed that Danny would have been taken there very early on in the days of the regime…

_[end excerpts]_

*

As Heard on Twitter (Selected tweets from the conference)

**@RobertaFirmina** : I’m @ the Red Annals conf. #RedAnnals2140 Just saw my academic crush, @ECChambers! Brb while I hyperventilate in the ladies’ loo. #QueerAnthropology #PhdLife #Nerd

 **@MoSalacious** : Conferences = usually boring. Not #RedAnnals2140! Academics talking about epic gay love? Yes plz. #BorneinRed P.S. The leading scholar on the Red Regime agrees with me that Adam & Jordan totally got together again at the Kop and made sweet sweet love. You’re welcome. #Hendollana

 **@DejanWithElan** : lol @ECChambers totes just called out all those lame-ass scholars who say #BorneinRed is fiction. I’m side-eyeing you, @SergioRamosIII (and all your cronies who dare to say that #Hendollana ain’t real. Step off.) #RedAnnals2140 #MakingHistoryCoolAgain

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was quite different, no? Main point as a summary: **most smart people agree that Adam and Jordan probably lived happily ever after** , or if not happily ever after, then at least they did reunite at the Kop and became rebels together. And kissed and stuff.
> 
> \o/
> 
> Hooray! Also, if you're not accustomed to attending academic conferences/reading academic papers, let me tell you, you have every right to think that academics don't know how to talk to normal people. Lol. I tried to keep the prose relatively free of academic jargon, but it is still quite dense to wade through (gah dangling preposition, my dissertation advisor will murder me if she sees this grammatical faux pas!). I've gone to several literary and interdisciplinary conferences now and um... one time in London I skipped most of the conference proceedings to go drink tea and eat quiche by the Thames instead, because I was so fed up with academics being academics? Yeah. Anyways. Sorry to subject you to this world if you have never encountered Most Important Scholars Who Know Stuff And Want You To Know That They Know Stuff before in your life.
> 
> I know it's still not the most satisfying end, but, this was my way of staying somewhat true to Margaret Atwood's dystopian universe while still getting across that I, the shipper/writer, do believe most fervently that Hendollana deserve to be togetha foreva! 
> 
> (P.S. Did you notice that the word count is now 20,014? And the year I chose for this conference was 2140? 20=Lallana, 14=Henderson. Why yes, I am a complete nerd.)
> 
>    
>  **< 3 Thank you to everyone for your comments, kudos, and overall love and support. I couldn't have done this without y'all!**


End file.
